


search my bones til you find what you’re looking for

by Meatball42



Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Captivity, Established Relationship, Fix-It of Sorts, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Secret Invasion (Marvel), Skrull(s), Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 05:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12450306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: It takes days to process all the prisoners retrieved from the Skrulls. Steve watches, and waits.





	search my bones til you find what you’re looking for

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to bardingbeetle for going over this fic TWICE, cleaning up my choppy sentences and all around fixing shit. It is now suitable for consumption.

After the fighting’s over, it’s days before the full breadth of damage is known, and clean-up is going to be measured in months or years. Every time they think they have a handle on how widespread the invasion was, a new pocket of Skrull sleepers is discovered, and it’s incredibly disheartening. Not nearly as much of a blow, however, as the two or three Avenger-imposters who’ve been unmasked after the war should have been over.

Steve hadn’t thought anything could feel worse than the War. But learning that some of the people he thought were on his side this time were actually kidnapped and replaced by hostile alien doppelgangers? That tops it.

They have to block off Anacostia Park in order to land the ships full of confirmed Skrull prisoners, most of them in their green forms, huge twitching ears, ridged chins and all. All the Avengers, SHIELD agents, and National Guardsmen overseeing the prisoner transports have been verified to be human. Captain Marvel is running the show over there. The last time Steve saw her, her eyes were glowing with rage.

The human prisoners of the Skrulls, returned to Earth at last, are being processed for reintegration on the National Mall itself. Steve is in charge of this sector, nominally, but Cap is doing most of the heavy lifting. Steve is mostly standing on a platform, watching as hundreds of humans file off of the rescue ships, many of them falling to the lush grass and weeping. Others move like zombies, or robots, beings whose feelings have been ground out of them.

He pretends he’s not looking for one in particular.

It’s the third day at this post, early in the afternoon, when Steve spots him. He steps to the edge of the platform, hands curling shakily around the flimsy railings.

Tony wears the same drab gray garments as all the other people the Skrulls kidnapped. His face is covered with the same wispy, malnourished stubble as the other male prisoners. He’s thin, gaunt even, and there’s gray in his hair. He looks just like the rest of the survivors, a shadow of his former self.

Steve would recognize him anywhere.

He steps off the platform and winds through the crowd toward the ship Tony came off, Bucky a comforting presence at his shoulder. When Tony comes into view again, Steve’s heart starts hammering.

He stops a few feet away. Tony is waiting in a line with the other prisoners to be assessed by a SHIELD agent, staring at the ground. No one off this ship seems to have much life in them. Something lodges in Steve’s throat and he swallows.

“Tony?”

Slowly, Tony’s head comes up, sluggishly turning to Steve. His dark eyes widen, suddenly alert. “Steve- is that you?”

Steve has never felt so conscious of the outfit ‘Commander Rogers’ wears. “It’s me,” he says gently.

Tony rushes toward him clumsily, stumbling barefoot on the grass. Steve feels Bucky tense to his right, but he lets them collide.

Tony is silent, strikingly so. He squeezes Steve with what seems to be all his strength, and it’s not much. Steve wraps his arms around the other man carefully, feeling his heart beating between their chests.

He pulls back to look at Tony. There are deep lines of pain and sorrow carved into his face, but he’s still the man Steve had loved, once. Still the man Steve fought, so many times. Still the man he could never, ever trust again.

Steve tries to let go, but Tony clings. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright, Stark,” Steve says firmly. Now that he knows… he can walk away.

“What? Steve, why-” Tony cups Steve’s face between his hands, eyes wide as saucers with fear, and desperation, and love, and Steve-

Steve pushes him back, just lightly, but it’s enough to force Tony’s underfed body back. “I have to go.”

“No, no, you can’t, Steve, you can’t go,” Tony babbles. Bucky steps forward and holds Tony’s shoulder so Steve can make his retreat, not that it means much when Tony starts shouting hoarsely. “Steve! I waited for you! Please!”

Steve hides a shudder as he strides away, ignoring the agents and civilians alike who turn to watch the spectacle. He’s halfway to the end of the mall when he hears a single gunshot from behind him, and instinct has him at a full sprint before he even knows where he’s running.

Agents have cleared a perimeter of thirty feet and are working to widen it. At the center of the empty circle, Tony is facedown on the ground, sobbing into the grass. Bucky has him deftly pinned, and one of Bucky’s handguns lies a few yards away.

“Who did it try to kill?” Steve grits out. He should have known better than to think he’d be able to tell the difference between the real Tony and a Skrull.

Bucky stares at him, then leans back slightly, revealing a view of his prisoner to Steve.

An inch-long graze bleeds red from Tony’s temple down his cheek into the grass.

“He didn’t know who I was, Steve,” Bucky says, voice hollow, and it takes only a few moments for Steve to understand.

Tony had known Bucky’s identity before the Invasion, before the War, even.

Steve finds himself kneeling in the grass, a numbness spreading through his body. “Jessica thought they took him a few months ago,” he hears himself say.

“Guess she was wrong.”

“Let me go!” Tony shrieks into the grass, writhing under Cap’s firm weight. Steve moves so he’s kneeling between Tony and Bucky’s weapon where it fell, and nods to Cap.

When Bucky lets him up, Tony slowly pulls himself into a cross-leg position, staring dully at the ground. “I could’ve let them kill me,” he mutters, and Steve’s whole body goes cold. “But I thought I would see you again. I waited years, Steve, I stayed alive for years. If you don’t want me, just let me die.”

Steve reaches out and tips Tony’s head up. Blood and tears mingle on his face. His eyes droop in exhaustion, but beyond that Steve recognizes the blankness of a man pushed past what he can take.

He pulls Tony to his chest and holds him again, tighter than before. He doesn’t know exactly who this man is, what he’s done and where he thinks they left off, but… while there’s even a chance that this is the Tony he called his beloved, there’s only one thing to do.

“I’m not leaving you,” Steve promises. He pulls back just far enough to seal his lips to Tony’s, and when the other man starts to shake, he whispers it again and again. “I’m never letting you go.”


End file.
